The Scope of Practice Review is set to hand down its final report later this month.

The importance of this review and its impacts on our members and their rural and remote communities is well recognised by ACRRM.

Over the past two years the College has had ongoing engagement with the Review team. ACRRM leaders and staff have represented our members in a series of meetings and consultations and provided two formal submissions:

This week, the College provided final written feedback to the Review Team which included the following key points:

  • That ACRRM supported in principle, system reforms to flexibly enable health team models that can optimally deliver care in rural and remote areas. Key among these should be rural generalist models which will integrate care across primary, secondary, hospital and community-based settings reflexively to the local context and community needs. The review needed to effectively facilitate these outcomes.
  • That the Review should adopt as a principle and target outcome for the implemented framework that people in rural and remote areas deserve access to a doctor which whom they can have continuity of relationship and at least some reasonable access to in-person interactions. This would be necessary, to avoid the adverse consequence of facilitating a loss of doctors to rural and remote areas.
  • That Rural Generalist Medicine must be appropriately represented in the Review as a critical part of the solution for maximizing the potential of rural workforces to provide safe, high-quality care.
  • That general practice had been underfunded for decades and practice viability needed to be addressed through improved funding if primary care services were to be improved especially in rural and remote areas where practices can be especially economically vulnerable.
  • That any major change would require extensive financial modeling, risk analysis and risk mitigation to safeguard against potentially severe adverse consequences especially for the already stretched health services in rural and remote Australia.

The College will continue its advocacy in this space and to keep members' informed on progress. Please feel free to contact the policy team if you have any queries or feedback at policy@acrrm.org.au.